Two

Out in the parking lot, Clarence and I met up with the younger bearded man, who opened up the trunk of a black Audi 6000. Inside was a black satchel. He unzipped it and reached inside, taking out a couple of bundles of cash, which he put into his pants pocket. Clarence went forward, counted the banded packs of one-hundred-dollar bills that remained in the satchel, removed five of them and put three in my hand, and kept two for himself. We both slipped our bundles into our coat pockets.

The younger man said, “Did I hear two gunshots back then?”

“Must have been the television,” I said.

Ramon was watching us from the open door of his room. Clarence went over with the athletic bag, Ramon passed over the bag of diamonds, and Clarence then came back, put the bag into the young man’s hand. The bag went into another pants pocket.

Exchange complete.

The younger man said, “Look … ask you question?”

I said, “No.”

The younger man’s face flushed, and then he scampered back to the motel room. Clarence raised a bushy eyebrow. “That was cold.”

“That’s what’s to be expected. Hungry?”

“Starved.”

“How about Billingsgate?”

“Why not?”

Then Clarence and I went our separate ways. He went to a black Lincoln Navigator with Massachusetts license plates, and I took my black Lexus with Maine license plates, and off we went.

We met up about thirty minutes later in the remote New Hampshire town of East Kingston. The town has some light industry, a golf course, farms, and a rabbit-breeding facility. Billingsgate was a restaurant made from a converted cider mill, and the owner thought its name was something British and veddy upper class. In actuality, the name comes from an area in London known for its sale of fish, and the cry of the fishmongers was so foul and nasty that the term “Billingsgate” was used for offensive or obscene language. But there was nothing foul with this building. Lots of old stone and exposed beams and a fast-moving stream in the rear that helped propel a water wheel back in the day.

The owner was a nice cheery guy with a premature receding black hairline that made his exposed forehead look like a shiny bowling ball, and I never bothered to correct his misunderstanding of his restaurant’s name. Life was too short and why shatter the poor guy’s illusions? Clarence and I took a corner booth where we could sit with our backs against the wall and examine both the menus and the front door.

I went with a lobster and scallop dish, while Clarence took the good ol’ Amurrican route of steak and baked potato. While we ate, we never once talked business. I stuck to the weather, politics, and my new favorite show on PBS examining the history of the Bible. Clarence talked about his ex-wife and his sons, the Little League players—who were being honored at an awards banquet next week—and how spoiled his boys were, for each year they expected a Red Sox team that would make the playoffs.

“My dad,” Clarence pointed out, “died a month after the Sox nailed their first World Series in nearly a hundred years, and he was the happiest I’d ever seen him. Ever since the Impossible Dream of ’67, he always prayed for next year. Today’s fans … don’t get me fucking started.”

During our first post-work meal nearly three years ago, Clarence had gently and insistently pressed me on my background, where I had been born and raised, what my career choices had been, and other life-bonding information like that. I kept on deflecting his questions, like an ace hockey goalie playing against a grade schooler on ice for only the second time in his or her life. But he hadn’t given up the pokes and probes. Finally I had excused myself and gone to use the restroom, and from there I departed—after picking his pocket and sticking him with the bill.

He never asked me a personal question again.

When we were finished and got to the cups of coffee stage, I asked him if he was up for some ice cream, and he shook his head. “Nope. My gullet is full.”

“Then we’ll take care of it next time.”

He wiped his face with a crisp white napkin. “Anything in the pipeline?”

“Not as of yet,” I said. “But in a retrenching economy like this one, you can bet something will come up soon enough.”

An attractive young waitress came by, all smiles, and dropped off the check. I picked it up and without using our new gains of one-hundred-dollar bills, I paid in cash with my daily supply, left a hefty tip, and then we headed out. A cheery wave and he went off to Massachusetts, and I stayed in New Hampshire and headed north, making sure to stay off the toll roads, with their cameras and monitors and snoopy State Police troopers in parked cruisers.

Outside of Manchester, the state’s largest city, I pulled into a Super Wal-Mart, stepped out, and went over to a five-year-old dull green Honda Pilot. I got into that vehicle and really started to go home. That Wal-Mart has its own surveillance cameras, but they didn’t cover the far end of the lot, which I used from time to time as my own personal staging area. Neither the Lexus nor the Pilot have one of those GPS systems, and I’ve made sure the little black boxes in the engines that measure speed, distance traveled, mileage, and other interesting bits of information have been disabled.

I live in what’s cheerfully called a bedroom community outside of Manchester, a sweet town called Litchfield that I had chosen carefully. It’s close enough to the highways and the airport out of Manchester for easy travel, and it still has a small-town feel that meant it stayed out of the news most times. Plus it had one heck of a volunteer fire department, which made for a comfortable sleep at night.

It was nearing dusk as I made my way down Route 3 and then took a right into a neighborhood called Merrimack Banks. It’s built near the Merrimack River, and I like it because the homes aren’t McMansions and the lots aren’t huge. Some time ago, in puzzling through where I wanted to live as I embarked on my new career, I thought that the clichéd stereotype of the master criminal living in a penthouse apartment or a remote, secluded Fortress of Solitude—complete with guard dogs, lights, a high fence, and command-detonation mines—wasn’t going to work. For one thing, penthouse apartments are pricey, indeed, and are subject to a lot of curiosity from your downstairs neighbors. Plus, being high up in a penthouse, you were trapped even before anybody took violent notice of you.

So, why not the aforementioned remote compound? That wasn’t wise, either, for setting up such a place was like setting off fireworks every Saturday night, begging somebody out there to pay attention. Building such a large, guarded compound in a rural area meant lots of tongues wagging, and texts being exchanged among the curious. Plus, being a one-man show—this was before I met Clarence—it would mean a lot of angst and anxiety over safety: if you’re on a remote hundred-acre strip of land, accessible by a mile-long dirt driveway, then the bad guys could come in with an M252 81mm mortar system and reduce hearth and home to broken rubble and burning beams with no one noticing.

Not that I believe there are a horde of bad guys out there in the shadows, gunning for me, but I always try to act accordingly.

I pulled into the driveway of my home, a quiet-looking country house, stained dark brown, with a two-car garage and farmer’s porch. My neighbors were across the street and in homes adjacent to me, about a hundred feet or so in either direction. Enough space for privacy, but close enough so that if a black-clad platoon of Jihadi warriors decided to trot down the road and into my driveway, some of my neighbors would take notice and call the cops.

I got out and left the Pilot in the driveway, walked over to my mailbox and pulled out that day’s thin offering—a bunch of fliers and two preapproved credit card applications—and then I went to the porch steps. Some low shrubbery separated me on the left from the Smith family, a young couple with two girls—ages six and four—and a yellow German Shepherd that was friendly enough, but had a cold spot in her eyes that said clearly that if you did any harm to the two young girls, her teeth would instantly sink into your throat.

To the right was Clem Houston, a retired American Airlines pilot who was a nice guy to chat with—especially if you wanted to kill an hour discussing the sorry state of politics—and he was in his front yard, trimming some juniper bushes. I gave him a wave, got up on the porch, unlocked the very pricey and secure lock to the front door, and walked in.

The front and rear doors are expensive, solid, and dependable, with deadbolts. There’s no keypad, no alarm system, no stickers on the windows or little signs stuck in the lawn to warn anyone passing by that this little suburban house has something to hide.

That’s attention I don’t want. Which is why when I’m not working, I’m the perfect quiet little suburban bachelor. I tell everyone who asks that I’m writing a textbook concerning macroeconomics—which should be finished in three or four years—and which makes most people’s eyes roll back in their heads. I’m of a certain age that companionship of some sort is expected, so if I’m asked, I tell the questioner that I’m a widower who had the love affair of a lifetime. Then I make a sad face, and the subject quickly gets changed.

I give out candy during Halloween, help the elderly couple across the street shovel out their driveway, and twice a year, when the street is closed off for a block party, I volunteer to make my world-famous cheeseburgers.

Occasionally I invite my neighbors in for dinner. My house is clean and unimpressive. Bookshelves, shiny kitchen, nice furniture, and a wall-mounted plasma television. No gun cases, no mounted heads of killed animals on the wall, and certainly no Guns & Ammo magazines scattered around the coffee table. And when my neighbors are eating, there’s no discussion of politics or anything else on my part that would make me memorable down the road.

I proudly give them tours of my house, if requested, and I even take them down to the cellar, which has a workbench with a collection of tools, an oil tank and furnace, and a spare freezer.

All plain, vanilla, and boring.

Which works perfectly.

I went inside my home, dropped the mail off on the kitchen counter for later inspection and disposal, and made a quick wandering around the rooms, no set pattern, just random, but I was checking all my windows, making sure the little telltale signs I left there—small lengths of toothpicks—had remained in place. Very simple and very effective.

All seemed secure.

I got into the basement, went to the workbench, manipulated the racks holding the hammers and a yardstick. The pegboard swung back, revealing my large, foundation-based safe, and I worked the combination and slid the day’s earnings inside.

In another minute, I closed everything up, and I had a quick memory of a tour six months ago, when a newly moved-in architect up the street took interest in my house, started lecturing me on its style and shape, and in the basement, started talking about the special foundation and how it was made from local stone.

He got pretty close to my hidden safe.

Lucky for him, pretty close wasn’t in the zone where I would have had to have snapped his neck and waste part of an evening finding a place for his body.

Sounds like a boring life, eh? But I love it. Get up when I want to, eat whatever suits me, read lots of books, watch a lot of movies, and sometimes take continuing education lessons at the local state university.

But work is always out there, and I’m always ready for it.

After coming back from a midmorning bicycle ride nearly a week later, I went into the kitchen via the one-car garage and heard a slight hum, followed by a pause, and then another hum. It was my latest iPhone, telling me a message had come in.

Goody. I was getting bored.

I took a swig of orange juice from my refrigerator, put the container back in, and checked the iPhone, clicking through a variety of screens until I got to a very valuable and unique app that I was promised years ago would take the efforts of the National Security Agency to track and maybe—maybe—crack.

I thumbed through, saw two invites for an upcoming negotiation. The messages were sent via text through an email system based in Finland, which went through a series of anonymous email forwarding systems before coming to me.

This forwarding system was also made by the same woman who made the unique app for my iPhone. I met her once, years ago in Perth, and had never communicated with her, ever again. And it took me nearly six months to earn back the money I had paid her, but it had been worth every penny. Or rand. Or yen. Or Bitcoin.

The date was set for tomorrow at two p.m., at a private residence in eastern Vermont, where the buyer lived. A drive, then, and reasonably local. Okay. And the item in question was a rare painting. Okay again. And the buyer was flying in tonight to Boston from Tokyo, and would arrive tomorrow at the same time.

I sent back my affirmative reply, made sure to copy Clarence, and then went upstairs to take a shower. The shower felt good, and when I was done, I pulled the shower curtain open and left it there.

When I came back downstairs—shaved, dressed, and teeth fully brushed—I checked my iPhone again and saw a reply from Clarence, setting up a rendezvous point and time. I quickly acknowledged that, shut off my iPhone, and then read up for the rest of the day about rare paintings.

Twenty-four hours later, I was with Clarence as he drove us to the small village of Chester, about ten or so miles away from the Connecticut River, splitting Vermont and New Hampshire into two almost identical halves.

As we got closer, Clarence said once again, “I thought you didn’t like private homes.”

“I don’t.”

“So why the exception?”

“An additional five percent, that’s why.”

“Oh.”

“And if it’s a very rare painting, that could mean a very fine payday for us both.”

“Oh.”

“And I was thinking that additional money would be helpful for you, your ex, and your boys, and whatever interests you have.”

He smoothly navigated his Lincoln Navigator along the narrow country lanes outside of Chester. He said, “Appreciate that, boss, but you don’t have to worry.”

“I can’t believe you just said that.”

“What? That you don’t have to worry?”

“No,” I said. “That you called me boss. You feeling under the weather?”

He sighed, ran a hand across his bald head.

“No, feeling fine,” Clarence said. “It’s just that … yeah, I’m worried about the future. Always worry about the future. You think this will be a good payday?”

“Rare paintings don’t get bought for a hundred bucks and Starbucks coupons,” I pointed out.

He grunted in appreciation, looked at the hand-printed directions. I don’t trust having printed-out directions from computers, because they always leave a trace. The land was mostly farms, with a few homes scattered in, ranging from mobile homes that were no longer mobile, to suburban-style Cape Code homes, to houses just a bit bigger and better. We turned on a road called Timberswamp, and went on for another mile.

“Okay, this looks like the place,” he said.

Clarence slowed and turned right. There was a nicely paved driveway, with flanking stonewalls going off to the left and right. A simple granite post had the numeral 19 carved in, painted black. There were a few birch trees and oak trees, and a nicely trimmed lawn. The driveway widened into a two-space lot before a two-car garage. No other vehicles were visible.

The home was old, made in the simple late 1700’s or early 1800’s Colonial style. Two story, with a peaked roof and shrubbery around the foundation. Clarence turned and backed in, so that the front of his Lincoln was facing out. He put the SUV in park, switched off the Lincoln’s big engine.

“You ready?”

“I was going to say I was born ready, but I don’t want to raise expectations.”

“Glad to hear it.” He unbuckled his seatbelt, leaving his dangling set of keys with a scratched round plastic Red Sox logo hanging from the ignition. That way, no matter what happened, we always had the ability to get the hell out of Dodge if the bad guys showed up, hitchin’ to do us harm, without worrying who had the keys.

Clarence got out first, and I followed him.

“Nice place,” he said.

“I like it, too.”

The door opened and an older couple bustled out. Both wore baggy khakis, and the gentleman wore a light blue pullover sweater while the lady wore a bright red cardigan. They were smiling and their faces were tanned and slightly worn, like salt-of-the-earth Vermonters who were just so happy to make your acquaintance.

“So glad you’re here,” the man said, stepping forward, extending a hand. “Did you have a problem finding the place?”

“No, not at all,” I said.

“George,” the woman said. “Invite them in. They must be tired for driving in all the way from Massachusetts.”

I instantly felt a flare of suspicion at her statement—how the heck would this grandma know about us coming from Massachusetts?—and then that flare was extinguished by embarrassment. The way Clarence had parked his Navigator, the red-and-white plate for the fair Commonwealth was quite visible to anybody looking on from the house.

“Sure, Beth, that sounds fine,” George said, waving us forward. “Come along, now.”

Clarence followed George and Beth into their house, and I kept a step behind him. I had on black shoes, gray slacks, white shirt, and blue blazer. Clarence had a two-part gray suit, also with white shirt and no necktie, and it was its usual baggy style. We were trying for up-scale country fashionable, and not to be modest, I think we both nailed it.

Inside was a small foyer, with a narrow plain wooden staircase leading upstairs. To the right was a kitchen and dining room, and to the left, a living room with built-in bookshelves crowded with books that I was instantly envious of.

Clarence and I halted, and George waved a hand to the stairway. “Come this way, up to my office,” he said. “Beth? Could you bring us some refreshments?”

“Absolutely, dear,” and she went off to the kitchen, and George led us up the narrow stairway. The walls were plain yellow plaster, with small-framed etchings of New England landscapes. Our footsteps were loud on the wooden risers. At the top an open door to the right led to a master bedroom, and we went to the left, to a book-lined office.

George led the way, sat behind a wide mahogany desk. There were two plain wooden captain’s chairs, which Clarence and I took. Behind George were two windows overlooking the rear yard and woods, and behind the two of us were similar windows. I spared a glance as I sat down. I could make out Clarence’s Navigator, parked in the driveway.

“I appreciate you coming here,” George said. “Would you like to take a look at the painting now?”

“Certainly,” I said, looking at my watch. It was five minutes until two p.m. “Your buyers have ten minutes to get here. Have you heard from them?”

“That I have, that I have,” George said. A sound of footsteps and Beth came in, holding a wooden tray with three ceramic mugs of lemonade and a plate of sugar cookies. The cookies had an elaborate swirl of sugar on the top, looking like maple leaves. We each took a mug and then Beth left. George munched on a cookie and sighed. “Damn, that woman makes the best cookies. Fresh out of the oven today.” He wiped his hands with a paper napkin and stood up. “May I?”

“Go ahead.”

George got up from his chair, went to a near bookcase. One of those large black zippered carrying cases for artwork was leaning up against the case. He picked it up with both hands and brought it over to the desk, pushed aside the plate of cookies, and put the case down, zipping it open. I went over as he flipped the case open. It was large, just over five feet square.

I looked down, looked back up at George, and then down again.

“What?” he asked. “Is there a problem?”

I couldn’t talk, couldn’t move, could hardly breathe. It was a large framed painting, filling up almost the entire carrying case. It was old, depicting a dramatic seascape. A small fishing boat with a tall mast was in danger of being swamped in a storm. Men at the bow of the boat were shown struggling with lines of rope coming down from the mast. At the stern, almost being washed away, another group of frightened men were gathered around a bearded man in robes. The colors were white and blue and black, and I couldn’t believe they were within my reach.

George leaned over. “Is there something wrong?”

Lots of questions were bouncing around in my mind, but I remembered another rule of mine, which is never, ever inquire as to how a certain item got into someone’s possession. Just accept the fact of possession, and move on.

“No,” I said. “Nothing wrong. I’d like to take a closer look.”

He gestured with his right hand. “Go right ahead.”

I managed to pick the painting up and looked at the back. No fresh paper or canvas was visible, which is always a sign of a forger trying to hide something. I gently put the painting back down on the desk. I took out my jeweler’s loupe from the previous job and gave a quick scan of the painting. The brushstrokes looked old, and they looked legitimate. The color of the paints used was also the right time period—nothing like cerulean blue, which wasn’t invented until the nineteenth century. The condition of the signature was good, too, with no bleeding or other signs that it had been added on after the painting was completed. The craquelure—the pattern of small cracks that develop on a painting over time—also seemed to be in the right locations and in the right amount.

“Well?” George asked. I ignored him, still letting the impact of the painting just overwhelm me. It was rare during a negotiation that I become intoxicated with reviewing the item for sale, and this was definitely one of those times.

I shook myself free. Clarence was still standing, cookie in one large hand.“Do you know what you have here?” I finally asked.

“A very old painting, I hope,” he said, sitting down in his chair. I took one more glance at the artwork and went back to my own chair, picked up my mug of lemonade, took a quick sip.

“Anything else?”

“Well … I saw this on the Internet. It looks like it could be what’s-his-name, the Dutch guy. Rembrandt. That’s what I thought the signature said.”

I nodded. “You’re correct. Rembrandt van Rijn is the painter. This … this piece of art is called ‘The Storm on the Sea of Galilee,’ and was painted in 1633. It’s considered quite rare and valuable, since it’s the only seascape Rembrandt ever painted. It shows the Apostles fishing on the Sea of Galilee, when a storm rises up, threatening to drown them. You can see Christ at the stern, with the apostles begging for his intervention.”

Next to me Clarence said, “Holy shit. For real?”

“For real,” I said. “And it’s been missing since 1990 … where it was stolen from the Isabelle Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, along with a number of other valuable artworks.”

George’s eyes grew wide at that. “How much is it worth?”

I pondered that. “A lot. But because of its current provenance, the size of the offer is going to depend on the buyer, and what he or she is prepared to offer. It’s a stolen piece of artwork. Very hot, very attractive to law enforcement. Just so you know, your buyer is going to have to be a special person, indeed.”

George picked up his lemonade mug. “He’s a Japanese collector and businessman. In fact, he should be here right about now.”

And he tilted his wrist to look at his watch, spilling lemonade all over his desk.

“Oh, damn it,” he said, standing up. “Beth!” he yelled. “Could you bring up some paper towels? I’ve spilt the damn lemonade on my desk.”

I heard a cheery voice, “Coming, George!”

He smiled and shook his head. “What a mess.”

He lowered his hand, opened a desk drawer, pulled out a pistol, and shot Clarence in the throat.